A Daily Telegraph book of the year. This is a landmark in science writing that resurrects from the vaults of neglect the polymath Jerome Cardano, a Milanese of the sixteenth century. Who is he? A gambler and blasphemer, inventor and chancer, plagued by demons and anxieties, astrologer to kings, emperors, and popes, and the unacknowledged discoverer of the mathematical foundations of quantum physics. The Quantum Astrologer's Handbook, like Jerome, has multiple occupations: it is at once a biography, a history of science, an explanation of quantum theory, and an engrossing story which reads like the best kind of novel. It is a science book like no other about a scientist like no other.

Michael Brooks, who holds a PhD in quantum physics, is an author, journalist, and broadcaster. A consultant at New Scientist, he also writes regularly for New Statesman. Brooks is the author of At The Edge of Uncertainty, The Secret Anarchy of Science, and the bestselling non-fiction title 13 Things That Don't Make Sense. His writing has appeared in The Guardian, The Independent, The Observer, THE, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and many magazines. He has lectured at, amongst others, NYU, the American Museum of Natural History, and the University of Cambridge.